Making Plans

Daily e-mails between various team members have flown furiously back and forth as progress continues apace. Most have had to do with the finding, creation, duplication or transmission of plans of various aspects of the Wahoo, be they her overall hull contours, fairwater configurations, deck details or armament specifics. Paul, of course, has been instrumental in researching and presenting the history of Wahoo's parade of varying deck gun types and calibers over her short but illustrious career, answering others' questions and eventually supplying the following basic, easy-to-discern layout of the progression of her armament alterations (and looks of her fairwater too):


Meanwhile, many plans and drawings such as the single example below have also been making the rounds, in this specific instance allowing Tom to take up work on the creation of the deck guns -- currently planned as corrected/super-detailed modifications of existing manufactured gun kits in 1/48 scale. No doubt Tom and/or Paul will eventually check in with detailed descriptions of decisions related to and progress made on the specific guns of Wahoo's various war patrols as their development continues. Note that as I understand it, the following image came from an old SubCommittee Report -- the publication still making its resourceful presence known from the vantage point of years of information-packed back issues readily available to submarine modelers and group projects such as this. I'm betting you have plenty on your shelf. If not, you should! (Plug! Plug!)

Also meanwhile, Matt's been logging plenty more hours at his Autocad wizardry, while Jeff LaRue continues to wrestle with Wahoo's very specific deck details, trying to lock down the associated overwhelming minutiae via help from Paul and Matt, for eventual photoetched reproduction.

Lastly, for now, the announcement of yet another, most crucial Wahoo team member: the West Coast's redoubtable Tom Anderson, master submarine model "master" maker, known throughout the hobby for the extreme quality and accuracy of hulls he's produced for sale by others over the many years he's been involved in the engineering of miniatures. Tom has graciously agreed to help out with the CNC machined production of specific parts rendered by Matt and his Autocad work, guaranteeing the parts eventually comprising this kit will be accurate like no others.

Stay tuned for further developments!

Jeff Porteous